As I said originally, I already own BG, BG2 and ToB. I wrote the post when I clicked the link from this website to go and advance-order BGEE. It's actually reduced to $17! I stopped myself at the last minute. Here's why:
I can play Baldur's get now and forever using the BG2 engine, in high definition, with the One Pixel Productons graphics, all the classes, dozens of well-made NPCs, extra spells, quests, rebalanced game mechanics and everything. I can actually plan all the way from BG1 t the end of ToB in one sitting.
BGEE will fix a lot of bugs, port the game into the advanced infinity engine and give me the same BG2 advantages, as well as three new NPCs and a couple of quests. But it comes at a price: Almost all of the existing mods for Badur's Gate, TUTU, Baldur's Gate Trilogy and Big World will certainly not with with Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition.
Just think about that for a minute. All of the existing mods and content of the modding community from the last 11 years will be of no use to anyone with BGEE. Sure, it's possible that one or two might work, but it's unlikely because we don't know what the detailed code changes in the infinity engine will be. It's also possible that one or two mod authors will update their mods, but the majority of them have moved on.
I want to buy BGEE and support the developers, but my message is: You have to provide something that mods can't provide. That is all.
Let me put this in perspective. One thing that BG:EE will provide that modders theoretically can't are the new adventure and the new characters. If you're to trust their description of these things, you have I believe over 20 hours of gameplay which is more than many other DLC these days. If the content is anything to your liking, that's already a plus and you could just see this all as really late DLC since BG:EE isn't that far off in terms of pricing.
And if we're lucky, your concern about mods being broken isn't that much of a issue: the devs claim that they'll try and keep the compatibility level high but also, a lot of mods will be included into the game as baseline content. If I'm not mistaken, one recent and notable inclusion is 1pp, not to mention the bug fixes.
Lastly, one thing that to my understanding modders couldn't provide for themselves is the extra freedom that the generalized re-coding will bring us. So if you're not yet convinced, maybe the modding community of Baldur's Gate itself eventually will. Who knows, maybe these where just the first 11 years of BG modding.
And maybe we'll be capable for modding in new character slots as well as adapting the game to that possibility.
BGEE will fix a lot of bugs, port the game into the advanced infinity engine and give me the same BG2 advantages, as well as three new NPCs and a couple of quests. But it comes at a price: Almost all of the existing mods for Badur's Gate, TUTU, Baldur's Gate Trilogy and Big World will certainly not with with Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition.
Just think about that for a minute. All of the existing mods and content of the modding community from the last 11 years will be of no use to anyone with BGEE. Sure, it's possible that one or two might work, but it's unlikely because we don't know what the detailed code changes in the infinity engine will be. It's also possible that one or two mod authors will update their mods, but the majority of them have moved on.
BGEE will fix a lot of bugs, port the game into the advanced infinity engine and give me the same BG2 advantages, as well as three new NPCs and a couple of quests.
I want to buy BGEE and support the developers, but my message is: You have to provide something that mods can't provide. That is all.
You are talking like New NPCs made by professional writer, artist and voice acting are nothing.. not talking about 'some quests' - The last quest related mod for BG1 was released in 2009.. 3 Years ago. most of the mods that are being made are for BG2. And the current quest mods are not so much compatible with each other, so the quests that BG:EE are something that mods currently dont provide.
I'd love a bit bigger party. Not because I want more power (you can beat the game with 1 character if you know your stuff) but because I want a richer RP experience. These were fabulous personalities they created and I hated leaving them behind. I wanted to try out as many combinations as possible.
That said, another problem I can see arising - more so in BG2 - is the interjections and conflicts. The amount you'd have with seven characters means some programming is in order.
Most of the main modders were contacted by the development team and are actually being heard. Among others, we have SCS's author posting in one of the threads, ToBEx's author is actually helping to debug the code.
So even if we don't get all mods in the release date, it will be just a question of time before they're out.
What do we get with this release? A more stable version of the game, maintained by a developer that listens to and supports the mod community.
Maybe it will even lead to less crash prone and conflicting mods.
Personally I thought the people that wanted 20 were just kidding... I guess I was wrong.
But seriously, I understand all those things as well, but some people are little peeved about the black pits because it's a seperate adventure that doesn't add to your main course throughout baldur's gate. Of course that's not necessarily a bad thing, but deviating from the story doesn't seem much like a good idea from my point of view...
Yeah, for roleplay reasons...I'd like to bring as much as possible everyone aboard, why would I want to leave someone behind? For those who think it'd ruin the balance, then just play them like the way you want it and don't go beyond the original party size cap. But it's been mentioned that it is a technical matter that's an issue here, if that's the case...I wouldn't force it. Still if it's possible to have that option, I would prefer that. Again, it's an option...if you don't like it, don't use it, stick to what you want.
@Xavoria, if there were only eight or nine NPCs, this wouldn't be so much of an issue. With BG:EE, there will be 28! That means at least six playthroughs to experience the journey with them all, and a much larger number to see all the cool dialogue that the developers wrote. The Baldur's Gate NPCs are very scattered as it is, and the result is that some (like Skie and Alora) easily get missed out.
Speaking to the mod questions a little upstream--I haven't seen anything in the beta so far that would make me think that mods won't be compatible. They may need some fine-tuning but should otherwise be fine, i.e. BG2 Tweaks should be fairly trivial for me to port.
I actually support the devs on this one. Yes, one of the seriously sucky aspects of the BG games was the agonizing over which of your party members to ditch after discovering some character in the wilderness who may or may not be better than your current set-up. Obviously, going off to rescue someone with 6 party members and then having to leave one behind (!) in order to keep the party size 6 = absolute madness. And from many (but not all) RP perspectives the more the merrier, it would seem.
However.
I'd say 6 is pretty much an optimum number for gameplay purposes. Even with 6, it's possible to have members who contribute comparatively little to combat. And, as mentioned, it's perfectly possible to play with less or even solo. Then you have the XP issues with too many party members. All of this would need working on, testing etc.
Many of the maps, room sizes etc just wouldn't work with more NPCs - imagine barging into some peasant's hovel with a party of 10 adventurers! Or a narrow dungeon, mine entrance. You'd have to work on pathfinding, party-formation, area-affect buffs (this gets messy with summoned creatures, even).
You also start getting into GUI and portrait issues with a load of faces cramming up the right side of the screen. Not to mention losing track of your characters; in battle and just wandering around the map.
I think that in another game, something built from scratch, some of the ideas on this forum could be implemented. But I accept that this EE isn't going to be Baldur's Gate in every respect how I always wanted it to be, but an improvement within reasonable grounds on an already excellent game, with an eye to maybe doing a new game in a few years time. You can't implement everything even if they aren't hardcoded limitations; some limitations are good things.
............
Finally, I think there could be some workarounds to some of the more annoying examples of the 6-party problem. E.g. having rescued Dynaheir, you are prompted to return to Nashkel to reorganize your party instead of having to leave someone on top of a hill. Same with meeting people in the wilderness - do you want to return to Friendly Arm Inn and reorganize party? - etc.
Basically mods that force you to add specific NPCs to complete them. In BG1 that's a great problem if you have formed a party of 6 already. I can't find a single reason I should dismiss someone who has been fighting along with me from day 1 just to help someone else.
Dark Side of the Sword Coast comes to mind, for instance, as you can't start it withou adding Jet'laya in your group and can't finish it without adding Trollslayer, forcing you to drop two from your group, one in an unreachable dungeon.
I wouldn't care if the game had an unlimited number of NPCS in the party, but 8 seems about an optimum number not to draw too much attention to your group as i said on my previous post.
In all BG, IWD, PT games only 5 NPCs can travel with the main character. In the AD&D the number of Henchmans depends on the main character charisma. I know that balance of the game is important and there could be trouble if somebody travels with 20 NPCs, so it would be cool if the NPCs would be more confrontational with each other and the team collapses would be definitely more often. The main character should be a peacemaker and his successes in accommodation of team members should depend on his charisma, wisdom, reputation (or even strength - think that only this could have any influence on Shar Teel). And I think that, like in P:T, only the player character could be the team leader (to avoid sth like this: "Big party? No problem. Viconia with Ring of Influence is the leader"). So if somebody would like to have big team he/she should invest a lot of points in charisma and wisdom. To avoid making 30 members party it would be necessary to remove all charisma changing items.
In the AD&D rules the charisma of player character depends the loyalty of henchmen... So the Jaheira would be very loyal but loyalty wouldn't be an attitude of Edwin. And player character charisma can make NPCs more loyal. See table here:
@Aliteri - I'm not sure this discussion is on the why/why not to get BG:EE. However, I do think that the existing mods will largely be adjusted to BG:EE. I didn't really go the Mod route (aside from TUTU and something that makes water reflection supposedly look better), but maybe I'm a vast minority. I worry about mods disrupting the game (more in the past than now) and am very selective. Regardless, I do think this will be a very moddable game. And, I'm reasonably assured that my new equipment will run the reworked classic!
As for the party size, I hate the limitation to six. I hated the limit to four in Dragon Age. I hated the limit in NwN (think it was also four, but don't remember, as my NwN did not get a long with Windows 7). My point isn't to raise the limit; it's more that, regardless of the set number, I will always be annoyed that I couldn't add 'just one more'. In a sense, it gives more variety on subsequent playthroughs, but it is also a limitation on what I can do at the time.
The good news is that I will get to do lots of new stuff. I've never, for instance, brought Viconia along. I tried Branwen, but it was mostly an exercise of trying to keep her from getting killed. Never kept Safana (Imoen was my thief, after all) and I don't remember some of the others (who is Tiax?). Anyway, these are things I'm going to try in the next playthrough (BG:EE).
@reedmilfam Neverwinter Nights' party limit was one party member. 'Cept for during the second expansion, Hordes of the Underdark. Then it was a whopping big TWO party members. On the other hand, it was soft-coded so you could go into the Toolset (a godsend which has kept NWN alive even today, despite EA's attempts to murder the online gameplay in time for their horrid 4th Edition NEVERWINTER MMO) and change it to however much you wanted.
I think gaming companies today intentionally give you lousy party limits to try and force replay value, rather than give it, y'know, replay value the way games like Baldur's Gate and the other Black Isle games did: by having actual options and choices of the path you take.
@Baldur I believe you. I played the beginning of NwN a few times, but rarely went far with it. Just didn't really care about the main plot, even though it had nice bits. I didn't feel as a part of the story as I did in some other RPG's (KOTOR did it for me, so did ME). Anyway, it all started for me with BG2...
The original post did say that if the devs included more NPC slots, as a example of something that modders have never been able to do for free, then he'd buy the BG:EE.
As for the party limitation - yeah, that's one of the largest plot holes in every RPG. Instead of introducing mechanics that might limit your party (example: Arcanum limited the size of the party by your leadership skills, the charisma stat), developers make do with a arbitrary limit.
I for one like to think that if you picked every Baldur's Gate companion you'd stop being a party and become a mercenary company, which would be much more expensive to maintain. But then again, no mechanic actually support this 'larping' of mine.
As for Neverwinter Nights... you should know by now that NwN is worth it for the community campaigns. I mean, they just recreated Icewind Dale in Neverwinter Nights 2. And for what its worth, the second game's campaign seems better than the first (though I don't know anything about the first game's expansions).
I think the price of BG:EE is going down because not a lot of people are buying it. They're probably worried that they haven't gotten a lot of pre-orders yet. Hopefully that'll change. That said, I'm not going to make my game purchase contingent on this single feature. BG:EE offers plenty of high-quality new content (not just new content) in an easily accessible package.
If BG:EE isn't profitable, I'm worried they might not produce BG2:EE (even if they have a contract for it). Further, they definitely won't make BG3 (or any other game of this quality). Once BGEE is released, you're also likely to see a massive wave of new mods. So supporting this game means getting a lot of great new content in one way or another.
I hope you change your mind about this game and buy a copy.
I can appreciate that it would be horrendous to change, but would love a party of, for example, eight chracters - more than that getting impractical for the various reasons discussed above. One of the main reasons being that basically half my social circle has fangasmed at the idea of this game, so if we get a few of us together for a multiplayer game, and want to try out the new NPCs, plus get all the usual banter we remember and love from previously playing it we start to have some difficulty within a limit of six, especially if you consider keeping people along for their quests or the like. The xp split amongst the group would be a bit thinner, and that might make certain encounters tougher, so you now have a bit more challenge in your gameplay too as an added bonus, sometimes having a few extra sword-arms is no substitute for a good fireball...
I by no means, wish to have a party size greater than 8. I would prefer 7 as opposed to 8, and only because that means that it's you AND 6 other people. Another reason is because of the amount of "duos" this game has, you can't bring that loner with you because you already have 2 sets of party members, (And it seems like most people bring Imoen with them).
I also don't know about anyone else, but the BG series is over ten years old and the more new processing systems come out, the more I doubt that it'll actually continue to work. I would suggest that anyone who likes this game, buy the Enhanced Edition so that you can keep playing it because the future is coming and the past is being left in the dust.
Lastly, it's just a interesting idea to have at least one more person. I personally invite everybody then drop them all off at the friendly arm in just in case if I want to find them later.
If BG:EE isn't profitable, I'm worried they might not produce BG2:EE (even if they have a contract for it). Further, they definitely won't make BG3 (or any other game of this quality). Once BGEE is released, you're also likely to see a massive wave of new mods. So supporting this game means getting a lot of great new content in one way or another.
I hope you change your mind about this game and buy a copy.
If they don't intend to increase the party limit in BG2 either, then why should I care whether they do BG2:EE? I don't say this nastily, but as an honest inquiry.
Comments
I can play Baldur's get now and forever using the BG2 engine, in high definition, with the One Pixel Productons graphics, all the classes, dozens of well-made NPCs, extra spells, quests, rebalanced game mechanics and everything. I can actually plan all the way from BG1 t the end of ToB in one sitting.
BGEE will fix a lot of bugs, port the game into the advanced infinity engine and give me the same BG2 advantages, as well as three new NPCs and a couple of quests. But it comes at a price: Almost all of the existing mods for Badur's Gate, TUTU, Baldur's Gate Trilogy and Big World will certainly not with with Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition.
Just think about that for a minute. All of the existing mods and content of the modding community from the last 11 years will be of no use to anyone with BGEE. Sure, it's possible that one or two might work, but it's unlikely because we don't know what the detailed code changes in the infinity engine will be. It's also possible that one or two mod authors will update their mods, but the majority of them have moved on.
I want to buy BGEE and support the developers, but my message is: You have to provide something that mods can't provide. That is all.
L.
Let me put this in perspective. One thing that BG:EE will provide that modders theoretically can't are the new adventure and the new characters. If you're to trust their description of these things, you have I believe over 20 hours of gameplay which is more than many other DLC these days. If the content is anything to your liking, that's already a plus and you could just see this all as really late DLC since BG:EE isn't that far off in terms of pricing.
And if we're lucky, your concern about mods being broken isn't that much of a issue: the devs claim that they'll try and keep the compatibility level high but also, a lot of mods will be included into the game as baseline content. If I'm not mistaken, one recent and notable inclusion is 1pp, not to mention the bug fixes.
Lastly, one thing that to my understanding modders couldn't provide for themselves is the extra freedom that the generalized re-coding will bring us. So if you're not yet convinced, maybe the modding community of Baldur's Gate itself eventually will. Who knows, maybe these where just the first 11 years of BG modding.
And maybe we'll be capable for modding in new character slots as well as adapting the game to that possibility.
Trent said countless of times that they work with the modding community and try not to break existing mods. You can deduce from this that BGEE will have in the future more mods, which will be easier to make. You are talking like New NPCs made by professional writer, artist and voice acting are nothing.. not talking about 'some quests' - The last quest related mod for BG1 was released in 2009.. 3 Years ago. most of the mods that are being made are for BG2. And the current quest mods are not so much compatible with each other, so the quests that BG:EE are something that mods currently dont provide.
That said, another problem I can see arising - more so in BG2 - is the interjections and conflicts. The amount you'd have with seven characters means some programming is in order.
So even if we don't get all mods in the release date, it will be just a question of time before they're out.
What do we get with this release? A more stable version of the game, maintained by a developer that listens to and supports the mod community.
Maybe it will even lead to less crash prone and conflicting mods.
But seriously, I understand all those things as well, but some people are little peeved about the black pits because it's a seperate adventure that doesn't add to your main course throughout baldur's gate. Of course that's not necessarily a bad thing, but deviating from the story doesn't seem much like a good idea from my point of view...
L.
However.
I'd say 6 is pretty much an optimum number for gameplay purposes. Even with 6, it's possible to have members who contribute comparatively little to combat. And, as mentioned, it's perfectly possible to play with less or even solo. Then you have the XP issues with too many party members. All of this would need working on, testing etc.
Many of the maps, room sizes etc just wouldn't work with more NPCs - imagine barging into some peasant's hovel with a party of 10 adventurers! Or a narrow dungeon, mine entrance. You'd have to work on pathfinding, party-formation, area-affect buffs (this gets messy with summoned creatures, even).
You also start getting into GUI and portrait issues with a load of faces cramming up the right side of the screen. Not to mention losing track of your characters; in battle and just wandering around the map.
I think that in another game, something built from scratch, some of the ideas on this forum could be implemented. But I accept that this EE isn't going to be Baldur's Gate in every respect how I always wanted it to be, but an improvement within reasonable grounds on an already excellent game, with an eye to maybe doing a new game in a few years time. You can't implement everything even if they aren't hardcoded limitations; some limitations are good things.
............
Finally, I think there could be some workarounds to some of the more annoying examples of the 6-party problem. E.g. having rescued Dynaheir, you are prompted to return to Nashkel to reorganize your party instead of having to leave someone on top of a hill. Same with meeting people in the wilderness - do you want to return to Friendly Arm Inn and reorganize party? - etc.
Most cities in the Realms would frown at a private army entering their gates, not to mention what an inkeeper would say if you wanted room for 28.
I think a reasonable max number of party members would be around 8.
Basically mods that force you to add specific NPCs to complete them. In BG1 that's a great problem if you have formed a party of 6 already. I can't find a single reason I should dismiss someone who has been fighting along with me from day 1 just to help someone else.
Dark Side of the Sword Coast comes to mind, for instance, as you can't start it withou adding Jet'laya in your group and can't finish it without adding Trollslayer, forcing you to drop two from your group, one in an unreachable dungeon.
I wouldn't care if the game had an unlimited number of NPCS in the party, but 8 seems about an optimum number not to draw too much attention to your group as i said on my previous post.
In all BG, IWD, PT games only 5 NPCs can travel with the main character. In the AD&D the number of Henchmans depends on the main character charisma. I know that balance of the game is important and there could be trouble if somebody travels with 20 NPCs, so it would be cool if the NPCs would be more confrontational with each other and the team collapses would be definitely more often. The main character should be a peacemaker and his successes in accommodation of team members should depend on his charisma, wisdom, reputation (or even strength - think that only this could have any influence on Shar Teel). And I think that, like in P:T, only the player character could be the team leader (to avoid sth like this: "Big party? No problem. Viconia with Ring of Influence is the leader"). So if somebody would like to have big team he/she should invest a lot of points in charisma and wisdom. To avoid making 30 members party it would be necessary to remove all charisma changing items.
In the AD&D rules the charisma of player character depends the loyalty of henchmen... So the Jaheira would be very loyal but loyalty wouldn't be an attitude of Edwin. And player character charisma can make NPCs more loyal. See table here:
http://www.ancientscrossroads.com/adnd_tools/cha_table.htm
This changes would make charisma a VERY important attribute. And I think wisdom should be necessary extinguish conflicts in our party.
For me this solution would be EXTREMELY role-playing
What do you think about that?
"The party cap is still at 6 characters and couple characters still hand together."
No idea about the hardcoded or softcoded function btw.
As for the party size, I hate the limitation to six. I hated the limit to four in Dragon Age. I hated the limit in NwN (think it was also four, but don't remember, as my NwN did not get a long with Windows 7). My point isn't to raise the limit; it's more that, regardless of the set number, I will always be annoyed that I couldn't add 'just one more'. In a sense, it gives more variety on subsequent playthroughs, but it is also a limitation on what I can do at the time.
The good news is that I will get to do lots of new stuff. I've never, for instance, brought Viconia along. I tried Branwen, but it was mostly an exercise of trying to keep her from getting killed. Never kept Safana (Imoen was my thief, after all) and I don't remember some of the others (who is Tiax?). Anyway, these are things I'm going to try in the next playthrough (BG:EE).
I think gaming companies today intentionally give you lousy party limits to try and force replay value, rather than give it, y'know, replay value the way games like Baldur's Gate and the other Black Isle games did: by having actual options and choices of the path you take.
The original post did say that if the devs included more NPC slots, as a example of something that modders have never been able to do for free, then he'd buy the BG:EE.
As for the party limitation - yeah, that's one of the largest plot holes in every RPG. Instead of introducing mechanics that might limit your party (example: Arcanum limited the size of the party by your leadership skills, the charisma stat), developers make do with a arbitrary limit.
I for one like to think that if you picked every Baldur's Gate companion you'd stop being a party and become a mercenary company, which would be much more expensive to maintain. But then again, no mechanic actually support this 'larping' of mine.
As for Neverwinter Nights... you should know by now that NwN is worth it for the community campaigns. I mean, they just recreated Icewind Dale in Neverwinter Nights 2. And for what its worth, the second game's campaign seems better than the first (though I don't know anything about the first game's expansions).
If BG:EE isn't profitable, I'm worried they might not produce BG2:EE (even if they have a contract for it). Further, they definitely won't make BG3 (or any other game of this quality). Once BGEE is released, you're also likely to see a massive wave of new mods. So supporting this game means getting a lot of great new content in one way or another.
I hope you change your mind about this game and buy a copy.
The xp split amongst the group would be a bit thinner, and that might make certain encounters tougher, so you now have a bit more challenge in your gameplay too as an added bonus, sometimes having a few extra sword-arms is no substitute for a good fireball...
I also don't know about anyone else, but the BG series is over ten years old and the more new processing systems come out, the more I doubt that it'll actually continue to work. I would suggest that anyone who likes this game, buy the Enhanced Edition so that you can keep playing it because the future is coming and the past is being left in the dust.
Lastly, it's just a interesting idea to have at least one more person. I personally invite everybody then drop them all off at the friendly arm in just in case if I want to find them later.